


Huntsman

by likeadeuce



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-17
Updated: 2010-02-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:17:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, the Queen called a huntsman and said, "Take the child away into the woods and kill her. . .And when you return, bring with you her heart, that I may know you have obeyed my will."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Huntsman

Colonel Stryker had a list of names. Wolverine never asked where they came from. Wolverine never asked much of anything. It was easier that way.

Besides. He would only forget the answers.

Stryker leaned over the file, tapping paper with his pen. "If you were having a problem with your assignments, of course, you would let me know." He stated this as a fact, in that put-on Georgia drawl that was half-honey, half-steel. He didn't look up from his list.

"Somebody say I got a problem?" Wolverine didn't bother to scowl at a man who didn't bother to watch him. "You send me to do anything that ain't been done?"

Stryker raised his eyes, slowly. "Yellowknife," he said.

Wolverine's fists tightened. He worked to keep the claws in. "Guy got dead, didn't he?"

"So did six of his associates, at least. . ." Stryker looked at the ceiling, doing the math in his head. ". . .two of whom, we could have used alive."

Wolverine remembered Yellowknife, the dark room, blood and flying lead. "They weren't exactly a Boy Scout troop," he grunted. "They were mean and they had guns. Just 'cause I can take a bullet, don't mean I always feel like it."

"Of course not," Stryker soothed. "I'm more concerned with what occurred after the mission. We had to send Wilson and Kane to clean up after you, because you were off the grid." He flipped the pen. It was one of those astronaut pens, the kind that could write upside down. Wolverine sometimes stole Stryker's pens, just because. "Nine days. You went off the grid for nine days."

"It ever occur to you, maybe the problem ain't me?" He put his hands on the desk, leaned down and looked the colonel in the eyes. "Maybe the problem is your grid. You know damn well, if I didn't want to be found, you'd never fucking find me."

Stryker didn't flinch. Wolverine knew he wouldn't, and that was one reason – maybe the only reason left – that he kept coming back. Here he was, two inches from Stryker's face, and the man talked like he didn't have a very pissed off assassin looking him straight in the eye. If Wolverine had to work for somebody, that was the only kind of man he was gonna work for. "Preliminary intelligence," Stryker said, like he was reading a weather report, "indicated there should have been a thirteen-year-old girl at the scene. The primary target's stepdaughter. By one of the women you killed."

"Preliminary intelligence can go fuck itself. I didn't see any damn girl." At least, he hadn't seen her until it was over. Laura. She'd come at him with a knife. Guts, the kid had. "Maybe she ran and hid."

"She must have run very well."

Wolverine stood upright and turned his back on the man at the desk. "Family of fugitives. Guess it was in the genes." It hadn't been easy, but he'd convinced Laura to stay with an Inuit couple he knew out in the territory, one he was reasonably sure wouldn't sell her into prostitution or early marriage as soon as his back was turned. She would probably run, sooner or later, but then – he wasn't exactly in a position to judge. Or to give her anything else. By rights, she should have killed him in his sleep; that she hadn't wasn't from any lack of trying.

Stryker dropped the pen and steepled his fingers. "I'm simply wondering whether your head is still in the game."

Wolverine turned to face him. "And if my head isn't in it?" He touched a finger to his own throat, then moved it to the back of his neck. "You got plans for my head?" Wolverine had thought this through. The serum Stryker used for mind control didn't do anything to him. They might have the hardware to cut him in pieces and keep the parts separate so they couldn't regenerate, or they might be able to lock him up. But in either case they'd have to hold him down first. Most likely, one day, they'd wipe his mind after one of the missions and dump him by the side of the road somewhere. But then they'd have to bet that he wouldn't put two and two together and come back after them. "Wanna get rid of me, take your best shot. I'd like to see you try."

"Nothing that radical needed, I'm sure. I've simply been thinking." Stryker set the file folder down on his desk and pushed it across. "Perhaps what you need is a partner."

Wolverine looked down, glanced over the vital stats, the black and white photograph. His throat constricted as he saw the youthful profile with its wide eyes. He wondered whether this was a test. He wondered if he wanted to pass. "You think I need a partner to take down a little girl?"

"Woman," Stryker corrected. "She's eighteen. A college student. Very gifted. And you misunderstand. I think you could use a partner, and it occurred to me this _woman_ might fit the bill. Think of this as a recruitment mission."

"Kidnapping."

Stryker's gaze wandered up, meeting Wolverine's eyes. "It wouldn't be the first time. Of course, if you'd rather go out on another kill. . .I can always send Sabretooth."

"Wasn't saying 'no.' Just like to call things what they are." Wolverine touched the file now, turning it so that he could read. "Jean Grey," he murmured. "Annandale. . .Westchester. . .NYU. What the hell did a girl like that do to get on your list?"

"Why, Wolverine," Stryker said with a smile. "You've never asked me that before."

*

Banff, Alberta, the guidebooks said, was the most beautiful town in the Canadian Rockies, a gateway to an unexplored wilderness.

As far as Wolverine was concerned, it was a boil on the backside of a perfectly nice province. The town was packed with tourists, and it smelled like them. Ski bunnies with their perfumes, god damned snowmobilers – talk about a whole demographic that deserved to die in a fire – with their grating noise and the rank odor of oil. And lots and lots of drunks, not a species he objected to in principle, except that they all tried to get drunk off the watered-down beer in the faux-rustic tourist bars, and were too stupid and too American to know they were being ripped off. If Stryker had been looking for an assignment to punish him with, the man had made a damn good choice.

But Wolverine didn't think that was it.

He didn't know why he was here, but he doubted it was a punishment. He didn't know why, and he didn't know why he was asking why. This Jean Grey was on Stryker's list. You didn't get to be on Stryker's list by following the Girl Scout code and eating all your vegetables. Wolverine should know. Once upon a time, he had been on it himself.

And so he was here, nursing a bottled beer in a bar full of American tourists who couldn't recognize the crime against brewery being perpetrated under their noses. Too naïve even to see the threat in him. How much danger could they be in, they must have thought. They were in Canada.

That was a mistake. Wolverine was in place. He had his target in sight. He was going to show Stryker he had his head in the game, that he was up for this job There was only one small thing he had overlooked.

Wolverine had forgotten what an eighteen-year-old girl was.

Eighteen could mean a lot of things. Old enough to buy a drink in the province of Alberta. Old enough to take to bed. Old enough to serve her country, which was all Stryker asked, at the end of the day. To serve _a_ country, anyway. It was close enough, and the only question was why a seasoned Weapon X agent was wondering about this at all. He didn't wonder; he didn't ask questions. A job was a job.

Except that the job was a girl, sitting between two friends at a table twenty feet away. Her companions, according to the file, came from the same dormitory at NYU. A black girl called Misty, and an Asian named Colleen. He didn't remember any more because he didn't need to remember, beyond the essential: baseline human, not a threat.

And between them was the target. She was strikingly tall, willow-thin, with dark red hair that fell to her shoulders. Tight cowgirl jeans hugged a well-shaped ass, and stretched over unlikely leather boots. Snug over her breasts, she wore a snowflake sweater; he could smell the wool, across the room, still carrying some moisture from the slopes. In the boots, she was over six feet tall.

Eighteen was older than Wolverine remembered.

But it was younger, too. From his vantage point, he could hear every word spoken at the table, and not because of any enhanced hearing. He could hear Jean Grey because she spoke loudly, exuberantly, because she was a kid on spring break, a vacation for the first time in her life away from parents and school. The girls were trading stories about boyfriends. The roommates liked someone named Luke, and another named Danny, though Wolverine couldn't for the life of him sort out who went with who. Didn't matter. The boys had wanted to come on the trip, and been forbidden. Girls only.

"If they'd have come," Misty laughed, taking a swig of the terrible beer, "we might actually have had to _ski_ while we were here."

Jean laughed harder than anyone. She had left a boy behind, too. "I know he misses me, but he has work to do and besides. . .I _promised_ to do anything he wants when I get back –"

Her friends squealed.

"—so tomorrow before we leave, I am going to the spa and stocking up on things I can rub on his body."

Except that wouldn't happen. She would be coming with Wolverine. She just didn't know it yet. _Just another job,_ he repeated to himself.

And then the job was walking toward him.

If he were still new at this, he might have followed the impulse to look away. But turning his head would be suspicious. Following Jean Grey with his eyes, as she walked up to the bar, was the natural thing to do. Just like a dozen other men were watching her; just like, from the way she was swaying her hips, she knew that they were watching.

Eighteen was old. Eighteen was young.

He took another drink.

"You're looking at me," said Jean. She stood at the bar, three stools away, and stretched her denim-clad knee over the wooden seat. "Three pints of Molson, please," she said to the bartender, and raised three fingers. Wolverine snorted. "Are you laughing because you're not looking at me?"

"I'm laughing," said Wolverine, "because if you had a brain in your damn Yankee skull, you'd order the bottled stuff. It doesn't give them such a chance to cheat you." Jean tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. "And every guy in here with eyes is looking you. Don't see how it matters. You're taken."

She lowered her boot to the floor and put a hand on each hip. "According to who?"

"According to you and your girlfriends and your very loud conversation about who it is you're buying massage oil for. What was he called?"

Jean's mouth pursed as she said the name, one sharp bitten-off syllable. "Scott." Wolverine wondered if he would be able to hold on to the memory of the name. A boy he would never meet, a boy whose life he was going to destroy. A boy who, in some stupid way, he couldn't help envying. Then Jean trained her deep green eyes on him. "What do they call you?"

He was wearing a leather jacket he had picked up second-hand. There was a name written on the inside tag. He had no idea if it was a first or a last. It was as good a name as any. "Logan."

"Lo-o-o-gan," Jean repeated, as though she were holding the word in her mouth and then letting it go. It was the first time he had ever been called that name, and he decided that he liked the sound. She spread her elbows behind her, and leaned back on the bar. "Scott is a kid. He's a very sweet kid, but I left him at home for a reason. Tomorrow, I'm flying back. I'm going to be --" She reached out to touch his hand -- Logan's hand -- a drink-cooled finger caressing his skin with each word. " – a very – good – girlfriend. But that –" Her head tilted back, hair falling against her shoulders. "That is tomorrow."

He watched her for a moment, watched her eyes, watched her hair. She was on Stryker's list. Stryker had said this would be an easy job. Stryker always knew what he was doing. This slip of a girl, redhaired girl, very gifted, boyfriend at home she wasn't in any damn hurry to get back to. A girl looking for an adventure, a girl who would come with the new-christened Logan, not only with ease, but of her own free will. And here, when Stryker said partner, Wolverine had assumed he meant in the field.

Man had a stupid sense of humor.

Wolverine shook Jean Grey's hand off and turned back to the bar. "Get the hell out of here, little girl. Go back to your friends."

He would need to have a mission log for Stryker. The job was a bust. He couldn't get the girl away from her friends without attracting too much attention. It wouldn't matter much, if his guess was right. How much could Stryker really want her, if she wasn't strong enough to put up a fight? As for the other thing, Wolverine didn't need Weapon X's help getting someone in his bed. It was a fucking insult was what it was. There would be other redheads.

"I'll go back to my friends," Jean agreed. Good. This stupid interlude was over. "And thirty minutes from now," she continued, "I'll meet you out back, where you didn't think I saw you parking that ugly old truck."

With that, she was gone, and it was weird. He had only been watching her from the corner of one eye, but he could have sworn her mouth never moved.

*

_   
The huntsman dared not disobey, so he led Snow-White out into the woods, and placed an arrow in his bow to pierce her innocent heart. But the little maid begged him to spare her life, and the child's beauty touched his heart with pity, so that he bade her run away._

 

He could have left.

Maybe Stryker would send Creed after her – and Wolverine wouldn't wish that on anyone, especially not a teenage girl -- but maybe he wouldn't. Sabretooth wouldn't exactly blend down in Greenwich Village. And if it happened, well, none of his business. She wasn't big-eyed Laura from Yellowknife. She wasn't some innocent. She was on Stryker's list. Something would happen to her someday. Wolverine didn't need to know about it. He could walk away, wash his hands.

He didn't walk away. Like the job or not, it was his.

He waited out back, leaning against the side of the truck. It was cold, probably – he could see his breath – but it wasn't like he felt it. Wolverine wrapped one glove around the syringe, Stryker's magic potion. 'Weak telepathy, undeveloped TK,' Jean's profile said. No match for a trained fighter. Get close enough to put the needle in her, and that was the end of it. She'd get in the car, they'd drive away. A few weeks later there would be a body. Not _her_ body, not if things went well, but Stryker always seemed to have a supply. The case would attract some attention in the papers – she was different from their other targets; white, college, family, money -- but everybody knew that young women who went off on their own, who talked to strange men, took their chances. Even in the safest tourist town. Even in Canada.

He wondered, for some damn reason, about the boyfriend, this half-anonymous Scott person. Would he be the type to hold a grudge against Jean's memory, or to blame himself for not being there? But why the hell was he wondering about Jean Grey's boyfriend? Because, he realized, he didn't have to do this. There was another way.

And then Jean Grey stepped into the circle of light, a few yards from where he stood. "Logan?" she said. "You back there?" And he still liked the name.

Logan smiled at Jean, staying in place as she stepped toward him. "You're a brave girl, coming back here alone." He wanted to shake her. What kind of idiot walked into the dark with a man she barely knew, a man who looked like him? A thought flashed across his mind. _Stryker can teach her to take care of herself._.

Except that when Stryker was done with her, she wouldn't be herself.

"So," she said with a smile. "Do you have a plan?" Jean's hair rippled against her shoulder by the wispy light of the moon. His hand still burned from where she'd touched him.

"You need to come with me," he said. "You're in serious danger."

She put her hands on her hips, leaning back on the heels of her boots. "For the record, that is officially the worst line I've ever heard."

Logan blinked. She thought he was flirting. "You don't understand. You're going to come with me. A very dangerous man has your name on a list. If you do what I say, no one has to be hurt."

"How dangerous –?" Jean stepped toward him, eyes level with his. She stayed at the end of the light, just out of lunging range. There was a smile on her face, like a joke he didn't get, and he wondered for a fleeting second if she made Stryker's list because she was insane. "How dangerous is very dangerous?"

"He sent me after you. And I can do this." Logan raised his hand and popped one long claw. It gleamed in a bit of stray light, and, as he expected, he saw the girl's face freeze, and her eyes change. It took him a second to realize that the fire he saw in them was anything but fear.

Logan's hand rose like a bad dream, like a force he couldn't stop. His hand rose, and turned, and the claw plunged straight and hard into the flesh of his upper arm. He doubled over, used all his training to hold back a scream, then stared up into Jean Grey's burning eyes. When she spoke, her voice echoed, like a drum beat against steel. "Do your masters think that I am an idiot? That Charles Xavier is an idiot?" Logan's body straightened, outside of his will, slammed back against the cab of the pickup. "Who?" she said, moving toward him, hand outstretched. "Magneto? SHIELD? Hydra? Who?"

"I don't know any Charles Xavier. And I don't work for fucking Hydra," he gasped out, fighting against the pain in his arm. He struggled to remove the blade, but his body ignored him.

"At first I thought you were Mystique." Jean slammed the heel of her hand into his forehead. "That blank space, that dark empty blank, behind your eyes. I only read it before from Mystique, but you're not." She slapped his cheek; his head should have snapped back, but it didn't move. He couldn't move. Her gaze was holding him.

She touched his wrist, and roughly pulled the claw out of his arm, then tilted her head and watched, without passion, as the skin healed in front of her eyes. "Even Mystique doesn't do this." When she spoke again, her voice had changed back, to the girlish lilt he remembered from the bar. "Besides. Mystique wouldn't be stupid enough –or horny enough --" She threw the arm down, claw still extended, so that it sliced into his leg. " -- to come out here with me. Who sent you?"

He tried to speak and choked on the air. She looked at his throat, and the pressure on his trachea eased. "You don't know them."

"Why did they send you?"

"I don't know. A man – your name on a list --"

"And you were going to save me?" The back of her hand stroked his cheek. "Save me or take me?"

"Yes," he said, "No. I don't know. I hadn't decided."

"No. That's not true. I think –" She touched his forehead again. "I think you thought you'd save me. That we would run away together. That I would love you. Is that what you thought?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know much very much. Logan." When she spoke again it was with the same dark echo as before. The fire in her eyes burned brighter. "Do you ever get _tired_ of not knowing? Of doing their bidding, of never asking _why_?"

And then, in the first true words he had spoken all night, Logan looked into her gleaming eyes, and said, "Yes. Yes. I'm sick of it."

A smile split her face, the fiery glow rising over her cheeks and her hair, and Logan, or Wolverine, who couldn't remember half of his life, knew with a certainty it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. "Wish granted," she said. He felt a hard pressure inside his skull. "It will only hurt for a moment. You may pop a vessel or two, but you always get better. And when you wake up, I'll be gone, and you won't know where you are. Or who. And maybe, if you're lucky, they won't try to find you. This is an important moment in your life. Too bad you won't remember it." His eyes began to lose focus and she faded into indistinctness. Logan saw a gleaming outline of flame, and he heard a final echoing voice. "Of course, you know. . .neither will Jean."

_  
And they both lived, happily, ever after, for a while._


End file.
